An integrated circuit semiconductor is a small device filling the demands for more features and higher performance. Electronic devices touch virtually all aspects of our modern lives. The underlying technology to meet the demands of our modern life involves many tiny electronic circuits on a semiconductor die designed to respond and react to our world. As the breadth and scale of the products and applications continue to expand, so too the requirements and difficulties for these electronic circuits. Requirements for specialized circuitry continue to challenge the performance demands across many parameters, integrated circuit performance, as well as size.
Some of the more recent products and applications have challenged performance demands for much smaller devices and integrated circuits while maintaining high circuit performance. The need for high switching speeds with much smaller integrated circuit area and dimensions, include small systems and larger systems in industrial applications and consumer application. These needs, whether for small applications or large applications, demand attention, knowledge, creativity, and effort in discovering solutions appropriate to the often unique applications and products. Conventional semiconductors, such as silicon & GaAs, are unable to meet some of the increasing demands of products moving to smarter and higher electronic content systems.
Driven by the size reduction of integrated circuits, including reduction of the gate length and gate oxide thickness, improvement in speed performance, density, and cost per unit function of integrated circuits have continued over the past few decades. To enhance transistor performance further, strain may be introduced in the transistor channel for improving carrier mobilities. Therefore, strain-induced mobility enhancement is another way to improve transistor performance in addition to device scaling. There are several existing approaches of introducing strain in the transistor channel region. New materials are being developed to meet the diverse demands for high performance devices at smaller technologies. One of the more promising emerging semiconductors is silicon-carbon (Si:C).
While great advances have been made in recent years, significant fundamental materials problems severely hinder commercialization and beneficial system insertion of wide bandgap electronics. One of the most intransigent of these problems is the high structural defect density in silicon-carbon layers in which electronic devices are constructed. Another is the very rough surface structure of silicon-carbon, relative to silicon surfaces, with a lot of disruptions that inhibit the performance and reliability of various device structures. The rough surface structure is particularly detrimental to silicon-carbon-based metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFET's), the transistor of choice in the vast majority of all semiconductor chips produced today. This rough surface of silicon-carbon also degrades the quality of layers grown on the silicon-carbon, which nevertheless still yields the most promising devices reported to date.
A number of prior art processes have been developed that contribute somewhat to the solution of the problem of defects and the rough surfaces that are produced in current epitaxial film growth processes. However, each of these prior art processes has limitations and disadvantages.
Thus, a need still remains for an integrated circuit system with carbon and non-carbon silicon to suppress surface roughening and provide strain in the MOSFET's, thereby increasing performance, volume production, and manufacturing yield. In view of the increasing demand for improved integrated circuits and particularly with higher voltage, current, and, temperature, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.